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The voice of human rights throughout EurasiaTue, 23 Jun 2015 02:15:29 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Purim 1953: Jews in the Communist empirehttp://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/18/purim-1953-jews-in-the-communist-empire/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=purim-1953-jews-in-the-communist-empire
http://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/18/purim-1953-jews-in-the-communist-empire/#commentsTue, 18 Mar 2014 18:15:04 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2350by Yosef Begun, Larry Pfeffer Jews in the Former Soviet Union are generally well aware that the Russian-dominated part of the Communist empire was getting increasingly anti-Semitic after 1948, when it became clear Israel would not turn “red.” What might have been had Stalin stayed in power? Yosef Begun’s memories from Moscow Two years after […]

Jews in the Former Soviet Union are generally well aware that the Russian-dominated part of the Communist empire was getting increasingly anti-Semitic after 1948, when it became clear Israel would not turn “red.” What might have been had Stalin stayed in power?

Yosef Begun’s memories from Moscow

Two years after the end of World War II in 1945, I was 15 and started my studies in a technical high-school attached to the aviation industry. I was lucky since a year later, in 1948, “the years of late Stalinism” began, with all kinds of discrimination and persecution of Jews. Jewish students were not accepted at our school. 1948 began tragically. I remember well a cold day in January. I was coming home late, frozen, looking forward to a hot supper. Right away I see that Mama is very upset; she is silent, with her hands resting in her lap.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Mikhoels is dead. It was an automobile accident.” she replied.

I must confess that at that time I didn’t feel anything special. People were perishing every day. During that period I didn’t know who was this famous Yiddish actor, director of the State Jewish Theater and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was very helpful in the fight against Hitler. In my youth there was no place either for the Yiddish theater or for its great actor Solomon Mikhoels.

I was very assimilated, like many others of my generation whom the Soviet regime deprived of Jewish education and Jewish identity.

Mama and some relatives went for the last farewell.

Before the Bolshevik Revolution Mama had had a “classical” Jewish girl’s education in the cheder of her shtetl and respected everything Jewish. I was brought up as Soviet citizen who studied to be aviation engineer and literally did not know the difference between Mordechai and Haman. As a 15-year-old boy I had something “more important” to do that day. Still today I feel ashamed of this.

At the time we still could not imagine what difficult times were beginning for us. Soon rumors began to circulate, each more terrifying than the one before. For example, at the great automobile factory in the name of Stalin in Moscow they said that “a group of saboteurs” had been uncovered, consisting of top engineers, all of whom were Jews. The newspapers wrote about “cosmopolitans” who did not love the Soviet homeland and Russian people and were “kowtowing” before the West. Almost all of the names of such people were Jewish.

There were rumors about closing down the Yiddish Theater…

at that time we knew nothing about the arrests, torture, trials and execution of Jewish cultural and public figures.

There were hints, rumors and much uncertainty which contributed to our sense of fear of what was to come.

Then came January 1953, when there were announcements about the “murderers in white coats.” Once again the Jews. Anti-Semitic articles appeared in the central newspapers Pravda, Izvestiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda. There were caricatures in Krokodil, with exaggerated Jewish noses and sinister faces. The newspapers printed letters from workers demanding that the “Zionist agents” be rooted out and punished. No one knew who these “Zionist agents” were, but the papers explained that American Jewish organizations were recruiting Soviet Jews in order to harm Soviet people. Every Jew was, therefore, suspect.

Many Jewish specialists were fired and rumors also circulated about the imminent deportation of Jews from Moscow.

It was said that Jews themselves asked to be sent to distant regions to be saved from the “people’s anger.” As many others I thought that the newspapers could not lie; I hated those “Zionists” who were planning to harm our country. Because of them it would be bad for all Jews! Only one hope remained: our great leader, Comrade Stalin, wouldn’t allow this! He saved us from the fascists and he knows that we love this country. He would determine who were the enemies and saboteurs. And our enemies, not just the Jewish ones, always got what they deserved.

FEAR WAS the constant companion of every Jewish family in the Soviet Union. The mass propaganda affected everyone.

In January 1953 I was on holiday at a small rest home near Moscow. Those who relaxed there were mostly simple, uneducated, hard workers who spent their time playing dominoes. However everyone showed up at a lecture about on “the international situation of the USSR.” In fact the hall was full and people were turned away. After the lecturer from the city committee of the Party sounded off about the machinations of “western world reactionaries” and the Soviet struggle for peace, he was peppered with questions about the main topic at the time: “What will we do with those doctors – the murderers in white coats?” Waiving his right arm, the lecturer stated with pathos: “The criminals have confessed. There will be a trial!” On March 5, four days after Purim, when Stalin’s death was announced, I was already 20, but was still terrified. I thought that now, finally, “they” would come after us; there was no longer anyone to protect us. One of the closest men to Stalin and a fellow Georgian, Lavrentiy Beria, became minister of internal affairs, and on April 4 it was announced that the “case against the doctors” had been fabricated by members of the state security service, including its deputy minister, Mikhael Ryumin. All of them had been arrested and quickly executed. Beria himself was arrested, secretly tried and shot.

The Soviet “Haman” and a Pharaoh of our time, who had planned soon after the Holocaust another major program against Jews, collapsed on March 1, 1953. In a symbolic and miraculous way that day coincided with a joyous Jewish holiday and entered Jewish history as “Purim 1953.”

3,000,000 Jews of the Soviet Union and its colonies were saved from the great disaster. One can only surmise what would have happened if Stalin hadn’t died just then. The possibilities included mass deportation of the Jews – following the model of Stalin’s murderous wartime deportations of the Chechens and Crimean Tatars. Disagreements among historians about what Stalin had planned continue to this day.

The truth about anti-Semitic Soviet actions was hidden from the public for many years until the Soviet regime collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s. Only then did Soviet citizens, including myself, become aware of the following.

In 1948 and 1949 a group of Russian Jewish writers was arrested, among them the most prominent being Peretz Markish, David Hofstein, David Bergelson, Itzik Fefer, Leib Kvitko. Famous actor Benjamin Zuskin, who played leading roles in Mikhoels’ theater, was also arrested. All of them and some other Jewish cultural figures were members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) during the war.

Together with them, some prominent public figures were arrested: Solomon Lozovsky, the former deputy foreign minister, Boris Shimeliovich, the chief doctor of the big Moscow clinic, academic Lina Stern, a specialist of physiology. Altogether there were 14 Jews, defendants in the “JAC trial.”

All the accusations were invented – as for example that the leaders of JAC were going to give up the Crimean peninsula to America. The real “crime” of Jewish writers was their activity in Jewish culture. By preserving Yiddishkeit, even at a very low intensity, they were an obstacle to Stalin’s plan to accomplish the Soviet “final solution of Jewish question”: total assimilation of the Jews. After three years of interrogation and torture all the Jewish defenders, with the exception of academic Lina Stern, then 73, were sentenced to death. On August 12, 1952, they were shot in the Lubyanka KGB dungeon. Many other Jews, mostly Jewish cultural and leading public figures, were arrested and sent for long terms to forced labor camps. Some of these people died under interrogation.

In 1949 famous Yiddish writer Der Nister was arrested, and he died in the Gulag in 1950. Yitzhak Nusinov died in prison. Shmuel Persov and Miriam Zheleznov were shot. Solomon Bregman, the deputy minister, died in prison in January 1953.

Larry Pfeffer’s memories from Budapest I was 10 yeas old in Budapest when Stalin collapsed and died. I only recall the pervasive sense of mourning in the city. Black flags and black drapes were hanging from the buildings. The newspapers’ front page had a picture of Stalin within a thick black frame. As far as I recall on the eve of Purim 1953 I acted in a purimshpiel in the Orthodox community complex auditorium. Sundays and afternoons I attended cheder in that complex, from the age of six. Probably this was one of the few operating cheders left in the Communist empire.

Periodically I saw the principal, Shlomo Grossberg – in fact, like other students I attended his wedding in the Orthodox complex courtyard. Suddenly there were rumors in the “Kazincy” central Orthodox synagogue that Shlomo had been arrested by the Hungarian secret police. Grown-ups didn’t discuss such matters with children.

Perhaps they also didn’t know what really happened.

I recall Shlomo returning to his position maybe eight to 10 months later, and his face showed that he had been through very difficult times. I recently met him in Israel and learned that he was arrested on Purim 1953 for a “Zionist” show trial. I didn’t want to ask him how he was treated, because I didn’t want to bring back painful memories.

Even as a child I often heard typical Communist propaganda about “Titoist traitors,” the “imperialists and their lackeys,” and “capitalist warmongers” – especially during the Korean war. In Hungary I was not aware of the scale of the Stalin’s terror against Jews, or that it was not limited to the USSR: anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist trials were organized also in the Kremlin’s colonies.

Only long after I escaped from Hungary in late 1956 did I become aware of the following events.

On November 20, 1952, Rudolf Slánský, the second most powerful man in Czechoslovakia, and 13 other leading Czechoslovak communists were arrested and tortured. Two received life sentence and the rest, including Slánský, were shot. Slánský and 10 more of those arrested were Jews. The trumped up accusation was being “Titoists” and “spying” for the “Western capitalists and imperialists” – typical of Moscow-directed show trials of that time.

Raoul Wallenberg, who did so much for humanity, fell into the hands of the Russians on January 17, 1945 – a day before the Russians drove out the Germans.

Wallenberg disappeared into the Russian dungeons.

His fate is still unknown. Reliable and highly respected investigators, such as Professor Irwin Cotler (former Canadian minister of justice), clearly state that Wallenberg was probably alive for decades after his abduction.

In 1952/53 a Moscow directed “Wallenberg” and “Zionist” show trial was in preparation in Budapest.

Leaders of Hungary’s Jewry: Lajos Stöckler, Miklós Domonkos and Dr. László Benedek, were arrested – along with two non-Jews who worked with Wallenberg: Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó. They were tortured to force them to “confess” the “crimes” invented by the “script,” according to which in 1945 they “murdered” Wallenberg in Budapest. (Szalai and Szabó rescued many Jews during the Holocaust. At Wallenberg’s request Szalai met with German general August Schmidthuber and prevented the murder of Budapest ghetto’s 70,000 inhabitants.) Other Jewish leaders were arrested and accused of “Zionist crimes” and “spying for the “capitalists and imperialists.”

The anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” and Budapest show trials stopped and the danger to Jews in the Soviet Union and its colonies was prevented by Stalin’s sudden possibly assisted collapse on March 1, 1953, which was Purim, and his subsequent death a few days later.

The accused doctors, the accused in Budapest, and probably large number of Jews and others living in Soviet Union and its empire were saved when Stalin collapsed on Purim, 1953.

It is suggested to start remembering Purim 1953 in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world.

Hopefully the Knesset would have an annual remembrance event and the Chief Rabbinate in Israel would advise synagogues to celebrate the miracle of Purim 1953. It is also hoped that schools in Israel will teach about these events and the immense crimes of international communism, which is estimated to have taken about 94 million lives (The Black Book of Communism – Harvard Press).

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/18/purim-1953-jews-in-the-communist-empire/feed/0Before Crimea Was an Ethnic Russian Stronghold, It Was a Potential Jewish Homelandhttp://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/07/before-crimea-was-an-ethnic-russian-stronghold-it-was-a-potential-jewish-homeland/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=before-crimea-was-an-ethnic-russian-stronghold-it-was-a-potential-jewish-homeland
http://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/07/before-crimea-was-an-ethnic-russian-stronghold-it-was-a-potential-jewish-homeland/#commentsFri, 07 Mar 2014 20:40:53 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2301by Jeffrey Veidlinger “On the way to Sevastopol, not too far from Simferopol,” begins what is probably the most famous Yiddish song from the Soviet Union, “Hey Dzhankoye.” The song, named after a collective farm near the Crimean town of Dzhankoy, celebrates the alleged victories of the Soviet collectivization drive of the 1920s and 1930s, which, […]

“On the way to Sevastopol, not too far from Simferopol,” begins what is probably the most famous Yiddish song from the Soviet Union, “Hey Dzhankoye.” The song, named after a collective farm near the Crimean town of Dzhankoy, celebrates the alleged victories of the Soviet collectivization drive of the 1920s and 1930s, which, according to the song, magically transformed Jewish merchants into farmers. “Who says that Jews can only trade?” asks the final verse of the song, “Just take a look at Dzhan.”

Now, as the new government in Kiev struggles to find its footing after the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russian troops are occupying the Crimea in the name of protecting ethnic Russians and, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested at the United Nations, combating anti-Semitic ultra-nationalists—an ironic twist, less than a century after the Kremlin contemplated the peninsula as the site of a potential Jewish homeland.

Jews have been living in the peninsula since ancient times, largely divided into two communities: the Krymchaks, who followed rabbinical Judaism, and the Karaites, who rejected the Oral Torah. Soon after Catherine the Great conquered the region from the Ottoman Empire in 1783, she opened it up to Jewish settlement, hoping that the Jews would serve as a bulwark against the Turks. Although Jews were later barred from living in the major cities, the peninsula promised open spaces and freedom to adventurous Jews seeking new frontiers and willing to take up a spade.

Tens of thousands of mostly young Jews settled in this part of “New Russia” over the next century. The Crimea became so identified with Russia’s Jewish history, in fact, that Jewish activists in St. Petersburg pointed to the long legacy of Crimean Jews as an argument for Jewish emancipation in the empire—after all, they claimed, Jews had been living there longer than Russians. (The 19th-century Karaite historian Avraam Firkovich even tried to argue that Karaites were living in the Crimea before the time of Jesus Christ, and he fabricated tombstone inscriptions to prove it.)

Jewish residents of the Crimea were also deeply engaged in the critical Jewish question of the time—Zionism—and by the late 19th century the area had become a training ground for future Zionist pioneers, who practiced agricultural techniques there before relocating to Palestine. Joseph Trumpeldor—who famously gave his life defending the northern Galilee settlement of Tel Hai with the motto “It is good to die for our country”—once trained potential migrants in the Crimea. (One Crimean settlement was named Tel Hai in his honor.)

In the early 1920s, the new Soviet government once again turned its attention to the peninsula. Concerned that the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, and Germans who mostly populated the region were anti-Communist, officials in Moscow were eager to buy the loyalty of new recruits with land grants and promises of autonomy in the agriculturally rich peninsula. When the American agronomist and communal activist Joseph A. Rosen suggested providing financial support through the Joint Distribution Committee to resettle Jewish victims of the pogroms in the region, the Kremlin jumped at the opportunity. In 1923, the Politburo accepted a proposal for establishing a Jewish Autonomous Region in the Crimea, before reversing itself a few months later.

Nevertheless, from 1924 until 1938, the Joint Distribution Committee, through its subsidiary American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation and with the financial support of American Jewish philanthropists like Julius Rosenwald, supported Jewish agricultural settlements in Soviet Crimea. Numerous Jewish collective farms and even whole Jewish districts sprouted over the next few years. The dream of building a Jewish republic in the Crimea remained alive until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Most of the Jewish colonists in the Crimea fled east to seek safety far from the front; entire collective farms fled together, traveling in convoys eastward, just ahead of the German troops, all the way to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.

There they reestablished their collective farms, and many joined the Red Army to fight the Nazis. As the war dragged on, Stalin dispatched two representatives of the newly established Soviet Jewish Antifascist Committee—Yiddish actor Solomon Mikhoels and Yiddish poet Itsik Fefer—to the United States and other Allied countries to raise support among Western Jews for the Soviet war effort. In New York, Mikhoels and Fefer met with representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee, who spoke of renewing their support for Jewish colonies in the Crimea once the peninsula was liberated from Nazi control.

In 1944, the Red Army routed the Germans out of the Crimea. Stalin ordered the deportation of about 180,000 Crimean Tatars in retaliation for their alleged collaboration with the enemy. Soviet troops ordered Tatar families to pack up their allotted 80 kilograms of belongings and board trains out of the region; soon thereafter, tens of thousands of Jews returned to the Crimea from the east to resettle the colonies they had been forced to abandon.

It was in the context of this chaos that Mikhoels and Fefer met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and discussed the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Crimea. Molotov seemed like a sympathetic ally. Stalin had appointed him in May 1939 to replace Maxim Litvinov, whose Jewish roots made him an awkward choice to lead the coming negotiations with Nazi Germany; three months later, Molotov signed the nonaggression pact that would allow Germany to invade Poland, beginning WWII. Yet Molotov was not unfriendly toward Jews; his wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, was from a Jewish family in southern Ukraine and had a sister who had emigrated to Palestine. Mikhoels and Fefer left the meeting convinced that Molotov would support the plan and followed through by sending a memorandum outlining the proposal to Stalin.

But instead, Stalin used the Crimean proposal as a pretext for a major assault on Soviet Jewry. The United Nations vote in support of the establishment of the State of Israel in November 1947 had rendered a Jewish homeland in the Crimea superfluous and reinforced Stalin’s suspicions of Jewish national aspirations. On the night of Jan. 12, 1948, Stalin had Mikhoels murdered, signifying the beginning of Stalin’s campaign against the Jews. Over the next 13 months, Fefer, Zhemchuzhina, and numerous other members of the Jewish Antifascist Committee were arrested. Zhemchuzhina was exiled to Kazakhstan. Fifteen others were tried in secret on the charge of conspiring with the United States to establish a Jewish republic in the Crimea.

On Aug. 12, 1952, in what came to be known as the Night of the Murdered Poets, 13 of the defendants, including Fefer and well-known Yiddish writers Dovid Bergelson, Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko, Peretz Markish, and Yiddish actor Benjamin Zuskin, were executed in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison. Two years later, the Kremlin settled the fate of the Crimea when it transferred the peninsula to the administrative authority of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

***

Between 2002 and 2010, I traveled on numerous occasions through the small towns of Ukraine as part of a team conducting Yiddish-language oral history and linguistic interviews with elderly Jews. Some of those we spoke with spent their youth in nominally autonomous Jewish districts in the Crimea. They all knew the lyric “On the way to Sevastopol.”

In one verse of the song, Abrasha rides his tractor like a train, Auntie Leye is at the mower, and Beyle is at the thresher, all symbols of progress in the revolutionary era. Nowhere does the song mention the 25,000 Red Army soldiers and factory workers who forced villagers into the collective farms, shooting or arresting those who resisted. As many as 15,000 families were sent to “special settlements” in the Soviet east, while thousands were shot on the spot.

Those we interviewed preferred to remember the Crimea the way the song described it, as a Jewish utopia. They spoke fondly of attending the Yiddish language schools, where they studied mathematics, history, Marxism-Leninism, and farming techniques in Yiddish, and they remember evenings out at the Crimean Yiddish State Theaters. Others emphasized how Jews lived alongside Russians, Ukrainians, Muslim Tatars, and Germans.

When we interviewed Tatiana Marinina in 2002, for example, she told us about how her family had moved to the Lunacharskii Collective Farm, named after the first Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, in 1931. She fondly remembered the cows, the horses, the sheep, and the vineyards. She described how her mother, who was a “shock worker”—the Soviet term for a worker who over-fulfills her quota—would work the cotton fields. She recounted friendly relations between the Jews on the farm and the ethnic Germans, who lived in the nearby villages, and between the various religious sectarians who made the peninsula their home. The Yiddish school was closed by the time her younger sister, Sofia Palatnikova, started her schooling; Palatnikova told us she went instead to a Russian language school in a nearby Tatar village.

Many people we spoke with remembered the tractors and farm equipment that American Jewish philanthropic organizations sent to the Jewish settlements. Zorekh Kurliandchik, whom we interviewed in 2003, told us of the collective farm he lived on for three years in the early 1930s. “The first combine was on the Jewish collective farm,” he boasted, “the Tatars would come and stare at it.”

The names of the agricultural settlements established during this decade reflect the optimism of the times and the multilingual nature of their communities: Fraylebn (Yiddish: Free Life); Fraydorf (Yiddish: Free Village); Yidendorf (Yiddish: Jewish Village); Ahdut (Hebrew:Unity); Yetsirah (Hebrew: Creation); Herut (Hebrew: Freedom); and Pobeda (Russian:Victory), to name but a few.

Today there are some 17,000 Jews still living in the peninsula. One of the few remaining synagogues, in Simferopol, was vandalized last week, when the slogan “Death to Jews” and swastikas were painted on its door. Now it’s Russian tanks on the road to Sevastopol, not too far from Simferopol, and the Jewish tractors that once filled the road are just a fading memory.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/07/before-crimea-was-an-ethnic-russian-stronghold-it-was-a-potential-jewish-homeland/feed/0‘I know tomorrow will be my last day': Uncovering Soviet Jewry’s Holocaust experiencehttp://www.ucsj.org/2014/02/12/i-know-tomorrow-will-be-my-last-day-uncovering-soviet-jewrys-holocaust-experience/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=i-know-tomorrow-will-be-my-last-day-uncovering-soviet-jewrys-holocaust-experience
http://www.ucsj.org/2014/02/12/i-know-tomorrow-will-be-my-last-day-uncovering-soviet-jewrys-holocaust-experience/#commentsWed, 12 Feb 2014 20:56:07 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2199by Smadar Shir For years the Soviet Jewry’s Holocaust was a forbidden secret. Now, through letters found in archives, Yad Vashem is working to make the voices silenced behind the Iron Curtain heard “To my dear brother, our city Priluki was taken over quite suddenly and very quickly by the German occupiers. My brother […]

For years the Soviet Jewry’s Holocaust was a forbidden secret. Now, through letters found in archives, Yad Vashem is working to make the voices silenced behind the Iron Curtain heard

“To my dear brother, our city Priluki was taken over quite suddenly and very quickly by the German occupiers. My brother – you cannot imagine what terrible months we have been through – famine, extreme cold, abuse, looting, humiliation…. I wanted to die so many times instead of continuing this life! Even when I regretted not dying in the bombings, I still retained one hope – to see you again – even if for just a minute – before my eyes are closed. But this wish will also not be realized. Yuzik, I know that tomorrow is my last day, but I am strong and do not fear the end of my life. I am certain that you will avenge the death of your sister. Take revenge on those responsible for the deaths of Tulya, Mara and thousands of others. I kiss you and send greetings to your friends, to my brothers and sisters and, I hope, that one day you will avenge our spilt blood.”

This farewell letter, which is now yellow and fading, is signed Eleonora Parmut, from the city of Priluki, Ukraine. She was 15 years old and was not expecting a miracle. It was clear to her that within hours of the ink drying on the paper, they would stand her in a line, would aim their rifles at her and her body would plunge into the killing pit.

And that is how it was. Around 6,000 Jews lived in Priluki at the end of the 1930s. Many of them fled in September 1941 when the city was seized by the Nazis. Some of those left were sent to the ghetto and others were sent to hard labor that many did not survive. In the end, the majority of the Jews remaining in the city – 1,300 men, women and children were murdered in two operations: In May and September 1942. They were lined up and shot into the killing pits. Some of them were buried alive.

But who was this Eleonora Parmut who left us this chilling letter? And what was the fate of her brother Yuzik?

Brutal and quick operation

“We will never know” says Dr. Lea Prais of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, who is attending a conference in Kharkov dedicated to the collection, research and mapping of the murder sites of the Jews from the former Soviet Union. “In Poland, Germany and France we found diaries that people wrote in hiding but from the Holocaust in the Soviet Union we found only one diary.”

The absence of such diaries is not accidental. “The Holocaust in the former Soviet Union was very brief,” she explains. “The country was occupied within several months – the operation was brutal and quick and the Jews were exterminated before they had an opportunity to develop a communal life under occupation.

“The Soviet Jews were also afraid of writing diaries. This was a result of years of the Stalinist regime where any personal writings put them in danger. They didn’t know who was going to find the diary. For the same reason they also spoke little and sparingly even during conversations with family members. Instead of diaries they left behind letters. A letter is a small thing that does not require a lot of time or thought, and I see them as a more democratic way of expression. They are the voice of everyone.”

The last letter from 15-year-old Eleonora Parmut to her brother Yuzik (Photo: Yad Vashem Archive)

Eleonora’s letter from Priluki was found by Dr. Prais in the Yad Vashem Archives. “Her family members lived in Azerbaijan and kept this letter and her picture like a lucky charm. When they came to visit friends in Israel, they gave the letter and the picture to a woman named Leah Basentin who in turn gave them to Yad Vashem. But she didn’t have any additional information and also didn’t know how to locate the visitors from Azerbaijan.

“In the last few years we have tried to make contact with Basentin, without any luck. Let’s hope that as a result of this article someone will turn to us. Perhaps we will be successful and find a clue that will lead us to the relatives of this girl.”

“The Holocaust is the most researched topic in the world,” says Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. “In our library we have 140 thousand titles and the research will never be completed since the deeper we delve, the more we find that there was unique behavior in each place. The general pattern and the basic approach were quite similar – they gathered the Jews together and then murdered them – but for us it is important to learn how they coped. We are speaking about enormous amounts of material – diaries, and letters that will require many more years of work.”

Around one and a half million Jews were murdered in the territories of the former Soviet Union “mainly in ravines – the most famous of which is Babi Yar,” says Shalev. “The Nazis led the Jewish village to large killing pits to where they threw the slain – sometimes 10,000 people. These places have never been documented and this is the task before us now. We have identified more than 2,000 death pits and we are researching each site: who fired, in what language the order was given and the level of satisfaction reflected in the reports detailing the completed mission.”

The written eyewitness accounts speak for themselves. A report from July 16, 1941 which is categorized “Confidential Matter of the Reich” states: “In the first hours after the Bolsheviks’ retreat the local Ukrainian population undertook some praiseworthy actions against the Jews. For example, the synagogue in Dovreimil was torched. In Sambur, 50 Jews were beaten to death by an angry crowd. The Security Police rounded up 7,000 Jews and shot them as revenge for their horrific and inhuman actions.”

A soldier called Franz proudly wrote to his parents: “Until now we have sent around a thousand Jews to the next world” and SS officer August Hepner wrote from the town Belaya Tserchov, Ukraine: “The Wehrmacht soldiers have already dug a ditch that will serve as a grave. The children were brought by tractor. They were lined up on the edge of the ditch and shot to death so that they fell within. It’s impossible to describe the howling. Some children had to be shot four or five times until they stopped.”

The research at Yad Vashem has led to the conclusion that the Holocaust in the Former Soviet Union must receive special consideration.

“During the Soviet period the Holocaust was presented as an integral part of the World War in which the Nazis murdered Soviet citizens – some of whom were Jews,” explains Shalev. “The Holocaust was not mentioned in the government educational system and harsh sanctions were applied to any researcher that dared to study this area. Some lone survivors, those whose entire families were murdered in the killing pits while they were fighting at the front, later came to the killing pits, collected eyewitness accounts and passed them on by word of mouth. Nevertheless, the authorities accused them of being traitors.”

Masha Yonin, born in St. Petersburg and now working at Yad Vashem, grew up in the shadow of this ambiguity.

“After high school I went to study in Estonia because in the city where I was born, Jews were not accepted to study the humanities” she relates. “I studied literature and Russian language and then returned to St. Petersburg, and together with my husband we joined the new Jewish movement that was set up by refuseniks. The Holocaust ripped up our roots, and we met in the refusenik underground, in private homes, to study Hebrew. Under the Stalinist regime Jews changed their surnames, were afraid to go to the synagogue, Jewish culture was wiped out, and cases of assimilation were widespread. The proof of this is in the fact that by the time the gates were closed, most of the Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union did not request to go to Israel but to United States.”

Unsurprisingly, the KGB did not relate positively towards the Jewish Hebrew studies in private homes.

“They used to come and turn the house upside down searching for Israeli newspapers, and if they found them they accused the house owner of undermining the state. When they confiscated the papers, they planted drugs among the bookshelves in order to accuse all present of dealing in drugs which carried a more severe punishment than nationalism. They wanted to ensure that we would receive long prison sentences, as in the case of Minister Edelstein who sat in prison, and they also wanted to humiliate the movement. They often used to say: “Who are the members of this movement? They are both nationalists and drug dealers.”

Despite the fear of being sent to prison, the movement’s members continued to meet in the Jewish underground “and alongside learning Hebrew we studied Torah, Jewish history and also about the Holocaust that was never mentioned in the Soviet Union,” Yonin relates.

“The Soviet ideology was that all are equal, that all the Soviet people suffered during the Great Patriotic War which is what they called World War II, and that the Jews were murdered like other Soviet citizens. If there was material in the library or the archive about the Holocaust it was in a closed, secret section which required a special pass from the director of that place, who in turn had to get approval from the KGB. Ninety-nine percent of the Holocaust survivors left in the USSR did not speak about what happened to them. Grandfathers were afraid to tell their grandchildren – for fear that tomorrow the grandchild would say something in school and then all the family would be in trouble and go to prison.”

In 1990, with the opening of the gates, Yonin and her extended family immigrated to Israel. She was 33 at the time and married. “A miracle happened to me,” says Yonin, getting emotional. “A friend of mine met with Dr. Krakowsky, director of the archives at Yad Vashem, who was searching for a professional archivist. My Hebrew was not good then, but within a month after making aliyah, I began working.”

The connection between the Yad Vashem and the government archive in Moscow was established a year before the gates were opened and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and USSR. According to Shalev, only after the fall of the Iron Curtain did the void become apparent.

“They were eager for knowledge about the Holocaust. In the last two years, thanks to support from the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the European Jewish Fund, a quiet revolution has begun in the research and teaching of the Holocaust of Soviet Jewry.”

These activities include: Increasing dramatically the collection of materials from archives in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and other places; uploading a new and comprehensive website in Russian which incorporates educational materials, virtual tours and online exhibitions; launching a YouTube channel in Russian; increasing the number of academic publications in Russian; displaying various travelling exhibitions in Moscow; publishing stories of the Righteous Among The Nations who functioned in these regions on Yad Vashem’s Russian language website; educational curricula for teachers and for youth movements and more.

“We started to photocopy materials from the Special Commission on Nazi War Crimes which had collected reports on what happened to Jews in each and every place. The library directors had no idea what materials were being housed in their archives because they were not permitted to see them,” relates Yonin.

She was the first from Yad Vashem to go to Belarus, and discovered the personal questionnaires of more than 12,000 Jews in their archives. “It turns out that the Nazis required that each Jew fill out a form in order to renew his passport, including pictures and fingerprints. I opened one file and then another, and there was no end to these surprises. This was a period of discoveries. Even the archive director had no idea what treasures were hiding there.”

The Belarus visit was also a strong personal jolt for her. “My father came from there,” she explains. “I found something that was connected to his aunt who was murdered in the ghetto. Her Russian husband locked her in the house so that she would not be found, and one of the neighbors, who was a policeman, reported to the authorities that a Jewish woman was hiding in that house. In the archive I found his letter informing on her.

“We searched thoroughly – until we discovered the fate of each Jew – who died, who fled to the eastern parts of Russia and was able to survive and who went to fight on the front and returned or died there. And so we were able to connect the pieces of the puzzle which until now was full of holes.

“But the picture is far from complete. In the area of the former Soviet Union, between one and a half to two million Jews were killed and we have only 25,000 names and personal stories. We clearly understand that we will never succeed in finding everyone, because in the eastern parts of the Soviet Union entire families were murdered without anything being recorded.”

Don’t cry for us

Dr. Lea Prais, together with her colleague from the Genesis Philanthropy Group, found more than 200 letters in the archive. Many of them, like the letter of Eleonora, aged 15, express the desire for revenge.

“We don’t like to stress the part about revenge since generally we want to be perceived as cultured people,” says Prais, “but it is impossible to deny the fact that in their final letters upon parting from this life, the Jews expressed anger, humiliation and a desire for revenge. Some of the letter writers did not know what awaited them, but in the project ‘The Untold Stories – the Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Former Soviet Union,’ we will present parting letters from those who perished. They knew that they were going to be murdered and they were totally helpless.”

Tomer and Aharon Guntser’s letter to their sons a day before they were murdered. ‘If you are still alive, it is a sign that you will continue to live’ (Photo: Yad Vashem Archives)

Each letter represents a mystery that is not always possible to unravel, like the one from Tomer and Aharon Guntser from Vinnitsa, Ukraine, to their two sons Yasha and Matya who were serving in the Red Army.

“I am writing to you both, my dear children, perhaps for the last time. There are no words that can express our passion to continue living but it is clear that this will not be. We would want at least to see you, my dear ones,” their mother writes to them. “Don’t cry. Don’t be sad. If both of you return from the front, don’t abandon each other. Forgive us if we ever hurt you. Our only sin is that we did not walk to where you are, but who could have imagined that this is what was going to happen?

“Your dear Grandma is with us. She sends you kisses and also asks that you don’t cry for us. I am leaving ten pictures to remind you of us. That is all that is left.”

And the father writes to his sons: “I am leaving you this letter, perhaps my last. Tomorrow we are going to the stadium; if they will leave us there, then I will write again. In meantime I will say goodbye to you. Be happy and healthy. Behave well and remember us and what we are going through. Continue to grow and be good. Look out for and protect each other. If you are still alive, it is a sign that you will continue to live. Yours, Father, Aharon Guntser, with love and kisses.”

The day after writing the letters, the Guntsers were taken to the stadium in Vinnitsa and from there by trucks to the killing pits where they were murdered.

“After much hard searching we discovered that one son died in a battle and did not get the parting letter from his parents, but the other brother survived and did get the letter,” recalls Prais. “We tried to find him, but it turned out that his wife is not Jewish and she didn’t want to hear anything about Yad Vashem, Israel or the Holocaust.”

The information about the family of Eleonora is also short on details, but Prais focuses on the photo of her where she is holding a book.

“Three years ago I was in Paris at an exhibition arranged by the municipality displaying photographs of Jewish children sent to the camps, particularly to Auschwitz, and all of them were memorialized while they are reading. I also have a picture like that, from first grade holding a book in my hand. To me, that is a typical Jewish pose.”

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2014/02/12/i-know-tomorrow-will-be-my-last-day-uncovering-soviet-jewrys-holocaust-experience/feed/0Flashback to 1970 Leningrad Trialhttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/12/31/flashback-to-1970-leningrad-trial/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=flashback-to-1970-leningrad-trial
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/12/31/flashback-to-1970-leningrad-trial/#commentsTue, 31 Dec 2013 19:29:54 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2049Widespread Demonstrations in Israel Protesting Leningrad Trial and New Trials December 22, 1970 JERUSALEM (Dec. 21) JTA Israel was still seething with protest today over the Leningrad trial and new trials of Jews expected to start soon in the Soviet Union. Demonstrations were held on university campuses in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. The trial […]

Widespread Demonstrations in Israel Protesting Leningrad Trial and New Trials

December 22, 1970

JERUSALEM (Dec. 21) JTA

Israel was still seething with protest today over the Leningrad trial and new trials of Jews expected to start soon in the Soviet Union. Demonstrations were held on university campuses in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. The trial and repression of Soviet Jews continued to be denounced by national leaders. The Ministry of Education ordered all principals and headmasters to devote one hour tomorrow to explaining to pupils the significance of events in the Soviet Union and supplied a recommended reading list. Wrath against the Soviets erupted into a shouting match in the Knesset today when members of the Labor Alignment, the independent Liberals and other factions exchanged insults and abuse with Meir Wilner of the pro-Moscow “Rakach” Communist faction. The contretemps started when Wilner took exception to a remark by Labor Party MK, Abraham Silberberg, that Russians, not Nazis, had killed members of his family during World War II. Wilner shouted that the Russians had saved millions of Jews. The Negev branch of Siah, Israel’s New Left party, assailed the Leningrad trial as a denial of the national rights of Russia’s Jews and a contradiction of Socialist principles.

The demonstrations throughout the country were peaceful. Several thousand Hebrew University students suspended classes for two hours to march on the Knesset carrying 37 torches, symbolizing 37 Russian Jews reportedly imprisoned for their “Zionist beliefs.” (The number of Jews on trial or imprisoned in Russia has been put at anywhere from 30-40 by various sources.) The students were received by Minister of Agriculture Nathan Peled who said, “Not only these 37 but the entire Jewish people are in the dock.” Students at the Haifa Technion held a campus rally after re-naming their Student House the “Leningrad Prisoners’ House.” They were addressed by Haim Landau, of the Herut Party and Dov Sperling, a Jewish emigre from Russia. Demonstrators at the religious-oriented Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan painted a swastika on a Soviet flag and burned it. Students at the Orde Wingate Physical Training Institute at Nathanya sent a petition to Moscow via the Finnish Embassy in Tel Aviv which handles Soviet affairs in Israel. Prof. Kalman J. Mann, director general of the Hadassah Medical Organization cabled the Soviet Academy of Sciences to press for the immediate release of Jewish prisoners so that they could re-unite with their families in Israel. The Israeli Nurses Association and the Organization of Anti-Nazi fighters sent cables to the International Federation of Nurses and United Nations Secretary General U Thant respectively, urging their intervention on behalf of Jewish prisoners in the USSR.

A delegation of Israeli Druze visited hunger strikers at the Wailing Wall today to express their solidarity with the Jews in Russia. Premier Golda Meir addressed the fasters last night. She predicted that “the tears of sorrow will one day become tears of joy when Soviet Jews will be allowed to join us in our country.” Louis Pincus, chairman of the Jewish Agency, led a delegation of Agency executive members to the Wailing Wall. He said the suffering of Soviet Jews was a “foremost concern of the Zionist movement.” The Young Judea of the United States and the Israeli Scout Movement, holding a joint convention here, adopted a resolution of solidarity with Soviet Jews after hearing an address by Mrs. Meir. While the situation in Russia was uppermost in the Premier’s mind, she reserved some scathing remarks for young Jews who joined the New Left, and according to her, sought to repudiate their Jewish nationality. Israelis were further angered yesterday by allegations that the families of the accused Jews in Leningrad were being persecuted by Soviet authorities. Shmuel Zalmanson, of Riga, father of three of the Leningrad defendants, made the accusation in a telephone call to his brother in Tel Aviv. He said no relatives of the accused were allowed to enter the court and that Soviet authorities were demonstrating “a cruel attitude toward them.” The Israeli Chamber of Advocates sent a letter to the chief Soviet prosecutor R. Rudenko last week asking permission to send two Israeli lawyers to the trial as observers. They have received no reply.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/12/31/flashback-to-1970-leningrad-trial/feed/0Report: Estimated Jewish Population in the former Soviet Union (FSU)http://www.ucsj.org/2013/07/03/report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/07/03/report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu/#commentsWed, 03 Jul 2013 22:08:55 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1780Researcher Allan Miller has compiled numbers from reports and news articles over the past several years to determine the estimated current Jewish population throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The breakdown within each country may not equal the total for the country because populations for some cities are missing. Estimated Present […]

]]>Researcher Allan Miller has compiled numbers from reports and news articles over the past several years to determine the estimated current Jewish population throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The breakdown within each country may not equal the total for the country because populations for some cities are missing.

Estimated Present Day Jewish Population of the Former Soviet Union

Total: 1.71 million

By country:

Russia – 600,000

Ukraine – 350,000

Belarus – 30,000

Moldova – 15,000

Latvia – 10,000

Lithuania – 4,000

Estonia – 3,000

Georgia – 8,500

Armenia – 200

Azerbaijan – 20,000

Kazakhstan – 15,000

Uzbekistan – 12,500

Tajikistan – 300

Turkmenistan – 1,200

Kirgyzistan – 1,500

By City:

Russia – 600,000

Moscow 200,000

St. Petersburg (Leningrad) 100,000

Kaliningrad 2,000

Amurzel 100

Yekatarinburg (Sverdlovsk) 18,000

Novokuznetsk 2,000

Khabarovsk 6,000 (20,000 in region)

Syktyvkar (Komi Republic) 1,500

Bryank 4,000

Cheboksari (Chuvashai Republic) 393

Ufa 10,000 (13,000 with surrounding area)

Astrakhan 3,000

Ilyinka 5

Vysoki 800 (they are Jewish subotniks)

Volgograd (Stalingrad) 5,000

Derbent 8,500 (600 children of school age)

Buinanksk (Daghestan Republic) 500

Khasavyurt (Daghestan Republic) 500

Orenburg 3,500

Dzerzhinsk 2,000

Novgorod Veliky 1,500

Sochi 3,000

Saltykovka (near Moscow) 500

Omsk 15,000

Krasnoyarsk 15,000

Tula 550

Novosibirsk 12,000

Siberian region 70,000

Rostov-on-Don 30,000 (66,000 in region)

Kazan (Tatar Republic) 10,000

Birobijan 6,000

Magnitogorsk (Chelyabinsk Region) 2,500

Izhevsk 2,500

Kineshma 500

Tver 4,000

Krasnokamsk (near Perm) 300

Vladivostok 1,300

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky 300

Voronezh 10,000

Kamensk-Uralsky 1,000

Perm 7,000

Magadan 1,500

Tomsk 15,000

Ulyanovsk 4,000

Nizhni-Novgorod (Gorky) 5,300

Samara (Kubishev) 11,500

Chelyabinsk 4,900

Saratov 3,400

Stavropol 3,100

Krasnodar Kray 3,000

Daghestan Republic 3,500

Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria area) 2,000

Vladikavkaz (north Ossetia Alania) 500

Grozny (Chechen Republic 25

Magas (Ingushetia Republic) 50

Chukotka 40

Ukraine – 350,000

Sevastopol 2,500

Belaya Tserkov 3,000

Mogilev Podolsky 350

Vinnitsa 4,000

Kiev 110,000

Krivoy Rog 12,000

Ternapol 600

Bereznegovatoye (Nikolayev region) 20

Evpatoria (Crimean peninsula) 800 (Karaites)

Chernovtsy 1,000

Dnepropetrovsk 30,000 (+ 20,000 more in region)

Odessa 40,000

Kharkov 50,000

Kirovograd 900

Lvov 2,000

Ivano-Frankovsk 700

Zaporosch 20,000

Mukachevo 100

Makeyevka 2,000

Kersh 1,000

Belarus – 30,000

Minsk 15,000

Brest 200

Lida 250

Borbuisk 1,200

Grodno 600

Mogilev 1,700

Volozhin 11

Moldova – 15,000

Most of the Jews live in Kishinev

Latvia – 10,000

Riga 9,000

Daugavpils 250

Lithuania – 4,000

Vilnius 3,000

Kaunas 600

Estonia – 3,000

Most live in Tallinn, Tartu, Kohtla-Jarve, Narva and Parnu

Georgia – 8,500

Tbilisi 7,000

Rustavi 200 families

Oni 102

Sukhumi (Abkhazia, claimed independence from Georgia)200

Tskhinvali (south Ossetia, “ ) 24

Armenia – 200

Most live in Erevan, Vanadzor and Sevan

Azerbaijan – 20,000

Baku 15,000

Kuba (Krasnaya Sloboda) 3,600

Also in Sheki and Jalilabad

Kazakhstan – 15,000

Almaty 10,000

Karagonda 1,500

Uzbekistan – 12,500

Tashkent 9,000

Bukhara 900

Fergana 800

Andizhan 100

Margelan 40

Also in Samarkand, Namangan and Kokand

Tajikistan – 300

Most live in Dushanbe

Turkmenistan – 1,200

Most live in Ashgabat

Kirgyzistan – 1,500

All live in Bishkik, except for 5 or 6 families totaling 24 people in south of country.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/07/03/report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu/feed/0Latvia Bans Public Display of Soviet and Nazi Symbolshttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/25/latvia-bans-public-display-of-soviet-and-nazi-symbols/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=latvia-bans-public-display-of-soviet-and-nazi-symbols
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/25/latvia-bans-public-display-of-soviet-and-nazi-symbols/#commentsWed, 26 Jun 2013 01:29:25 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1742The Associated Press reports that Latvia’s Parliament has banned the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols, as well as any promotion of fascist or communist ideologies. This includes visual displays of swastikas and the hammer and sickle and the singing of Soviet or Nazi anthems. It is expected to be signed into law by […]

]]>The Associated Press reports that Latvia’s Parliament has banned the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols, as well as any promotion of fascist or communist ideologies. This includes visual displays of swastikas and the hammer and sickle and the singing of Soviet or Nazi anthems. It is expected to be signed into law by President Andris Berzins next month.

This new bill arose due, in part, to the annual pro-Soviet rallies organized by Latvia’s Russian-speaking community. Ethnic Latvians, aware of Latvia’s five decades of Soviet occupation, greatly disapprove of such rallies.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/25/latvia-bans-public-display-of-soviet-and-nazi-symbols/feed/0Limmud FSU Conference Held in Vitebsk, Belarushttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/07/limmud-fsu-conference-held-in-vitebsk-belarus/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=limmud-fsu-conference-held-in-vitebsk-belarus
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/07/limmud-fsu-conference-held-in-vitebsk-belarus/#commentsFri, 07 Jun 2013 19:04:33 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1699From JPost: VITEBSK, Belarus – The latest incarnation of Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union) took place for the first time in Belarus over the weekend, one of the most storied countries in Jewish history. Once home to a thriving Jewish community decimated by World War II, Belarus produced nine Israeli presidents, two Nobel Prize laureates […]

VITEBSK, Belarus – The latest incarnation of Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union) took place for the first time in Belarus over the weekend, one of the most storied countries in Jewish history.

Once home to a thriving Jewish community decimated by World War II, Belarus produced nine Israeli presidents, two Nobel Prize laureates and dozens of world-class rabbis, intellectuals and artists. Notable among these figures are President Shimon Peres, former prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, former president Chaim Weizmann, the Soloveitchik rabbinical dynasty, and renowned artists Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine and Nahum Goldmann.

In Vitebsk, a four-hour drive outside the capital of Minsk, over 500 young Jewish men and women converged from Friday to Sunday to learn more about their shared history.

Even Peres’s daughter, celebrated linguist and author Prof. Tzvia Walden, flew in from Israel with her husband, Sheba Medical Center deputy director Prof. Raphael Walden, to speak at the historic conference and to honor her father’s childhood home outside of Minsk.

“I am honored to be here to represent my father,” said Walden when the Belarus government designated his modest childhood home a national monument last week. “I know he would have been so happy to be here with all of you.”

Still, Belarus’s tragic history – shrouded by the mass murder of 800,000 Jews who had lived there for centuries – was never far from the minds of the many participants who traveled from other FSU countries, America and Israel to attend the gathering.

“We must never forget the genocide that took place here,” said famed Belarus architect Leonid Levin, who is chairman of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public Organizations and Communities, on Friday at a memorial site where 5,000 Jews were slaughtered. “This is our past. This is part of who we are.”

Prominent philanthropist and businessman Matthew Bronfman, who chairs Limmud FSU’s International Steering Committee, said he had traveled from New York to attend the conference in Vitebsk to help reconnect young Jews with a once-severed history.

“Our conferences embody the very spirit, energy and excitement of a new and young generation who are eager to reconnect with their own rich intellectual and religious heritage, from which they and their parents were cut off during 70 years of Communist rule,” he said.

He added that Limmud was “a revolutionary approach to questions of Jewish identity and education, and has become an inseparable part of the circle of Jewish life for young and not-so-young Russian-speaking adults.”

The volunteer-driven Limmud Jewish education conferences, first conceived in Britain 33 years ago, have since branched out internationally in nearly 10 countries, including Canada, Australia, the US, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and most recently Belarus.

Limmud FSU was founded in 2006 by Chaim Chelser, of Israel, co-founded by Sandra Cahn, of New York, and Mikhail Chlenov, of Russia, and Aaron Frenkel, of Monte Carlo, is the president. The organization presents world-class Jewish scholars and professionals on topics including Diaspora Jews in the 21st century, Jewish art history, Torah and business, Israeli society, science and the soul, Jewish philosophy and Jewish-themed dance classes.

“We combined Limmud with Vitebsk, the capital of culture of the former Soviet Union – the country of Chagall and many other distinguished artists, as well as the former home to two great Israeli leaders and Nobel Prize winners, Shimon Peres and Menachem Begin,” said Chesler.

He praised the governments of Minsk and Brest, known to be politically restrictive, for having agreed to honor Peres’s childhood home and recognize Begin.

“It is a great achievement for Limmud to work on a joint effort of this kind with these governments, and shows that there is still a future for Jews in this part of the world,” he said.

Yana Osipova, an 18-yearold college student from Belarus, said Sunday that she was attending the conference to learn from world-class professionals.

“I belong to a Jewish club in my city and I live a Jewish life, so this project is interesting to me because many interesting people with different interests are here, and they’re willing to share their experience and knowledge with other people, and they do it with pleasure,” she said.

She added that there was “no problem being Jewish in Belarus.”

“There are some people who sometimes laugh at Jews, but that’s not a problem – especially when you meet and learn from people like this,” she said.

Participants certainly had a breadth of options, with speakers including senior Peres adviser Yoram Dori; Susan Goodman-Turnarkin, senior curator emeritus at the Jewish Museum of New York; Israeli Ambassador to Belarus Yosef Shagal; director, producer and screenwriter Boris Maftsir; and actor and director Shmuel Atzmon, founder of the Yiddishpiel Theater in Tel Aviv.

Vasilisa Smirnova, a cosmetics business developer from Moldova, said this was her seventh Limmud conference.

“I’ve become a Limmud addict,” she said over the weekend. “For me, this is important because I find Jewish culture very deep and very wise, and because I am young and looking for answers. I have found that Jewish culture helps me find answers to questions like, ‘Who I am in this world?’ and ‘What I should do?’” Kate Kozenkova, a 19-yearold college student, traveled four hours from Minsk to attend the conference, even though she is not Jewish.

“It’s a great opportunity to meet new people from all over the world, and I think it’s a good forum for promoting Belarus, which I love,” she said. “I think that the Jewish culture and community are great. I have never seen such close relationships between people who have never met before – they speak and connect with their hearts.”

While Kozenkova said she did not have any Jewish friends in Minsk, she noted enthusiastically that she had made several over the two days of the conference.

“For me, it’s your culture that I love – there are so many unbelievably interesting things about it that inspire me,” she said.

The people, she continued, “are so open and kind….

They smile at each other and are like a big family, and it doesn’t matter where I’m from or what I do…. It’s like an island paradise of Limmud.”

For Julia Davyelava, a musician and English teacher from Belarus, the Vitebsk event was her first Limmud conference.

“I wanted to learn what Limmud was all about because I’m a creative person and have interests in different spheres – philosophy, psychology, religion and literature,” she said. “I attended amazing lectures and now feel like I’m taking with me a little piece of gold from the beauty I saw here.”

While the vast majority of attendees said they were pleased with the lectures at the event, Anastasia Rosenberg, a Jewish Agency employee from Moscow who has attended five conferences, said she was disappointed by Vitebsk’s limited offerings on art history.

“I was an art history major, and I had hoped for more information about art in the sessions, since Chagall is from here, but I felt that the presenters were too broad in their presentations,” she said. “I just wish they offered more details about the art of great Jewish artists like him, and not general facts that I already knew.”

Despite her complaint, though, she said she was grateful for the program’s overall ability to educate her in a number of other areas of Jewish history and culture.

“Every Limmud is a step forward in life because you learn so much every time you attend,” she said. “This is why I keep coming.”

Natasha Lukyanava, a pianist and English translator from Minsk, said Limmud organizers had paid for her to attend the conference when health problems left her short of cash.

“I wasn’t able to pay to come because I was having trouble with my back and was unable to work,” she said. “But I wanted to come because I wanted knowledge – it’s just something from inside me. And Limmud let me come without paying.”

She said organizers had provided her with train and hotel fare so she could meet a friend at the conference, who helped her over the two days.

“I thought, if God wants me here, He will provide for me,” she said with a smile.

“And He did.”

She added that it was her dream to make aliya one day.

“I have been to Jerusalem a couple of times, and I really felt connected to it – like the saying, ‘If I forget Jerusalem, may my right arm wither away,’” she continued. “I felt like [Israelis] were my family, and I hope to come back to see them again soon. I feel like it is my country because the Old City’s Jewish Quarter has an atmosphere like Minsk.”

Meanwhile, Limmud FSU COO Roman Kogan, who has been instrumental in arranging all of the program’s conferences throughout the former Soviet Union, America and Israel, said he was delighted at how well Belarus’s first Limmud panned out.

“We are very proud to launch the Limmud FSU project in Belarus,” he said after the conference concluded.

“We worked very hard for many years to make this happen, and for the first conference here, it was brilliant in terms of the quality of the program.”

He thanked the numerous volunteers and presenters who had contributed.

“For Belarus it’s a huge project, because it gives the young generation of Belarus Jews an alternative platform for building their Jewish community and life, and I hope it will become a regular Limmud destination and continue to grow, because Belarus has a very rich Jewish history.”

Indeed, Kogan said he hoped Limmud would help reestablish a Jewish presence in a land where Jews once thrived and contributed to the world.

“We hope Limmud will contribute its own piece to this colorful mosaic for today’s Jews,” he said.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/07/limmud-fsu-conference-held-in-vitebsk-belarus/feed/0The Passing of Senator Frank Lautenberghttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/05/the-passing-of-senator-frank-lautenberg/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-passing-of-senator-frank-lautenberg
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/05/the-passing-of-senator-frank-lautenberg/#commentsThu, 06 Jun 2013 00:48:04 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1692We at the Union of Councils for Jews in the former Soviet Union are saddened by the passing of Senator Frank Lautenberg. He was a devoted public servant and a friend of all those around the world fleeing from religious discrimination; in particular, the millions of Jews from the former Soviet Union who owe him a […]

]]>We at the Union of Councils for Jews in the former Soviet Union are saddened by the passing of Senator Frank Lautenberg. He was a devoted public servant and a friend of all those around the world fleeing from religious discrimination; in particular, the millions of Jews from the former Soviet Union who owe him a debt of gratitude for his support and leadership.

Dr. Leonid Stonov, a former Refusenik who is now the Director of International Activities for the UCSJ, recalls Senator Lautenberg’s interest regarding Jewish life in the USSR:

In 1989, the Senator visited Russia and spent a whole day with a group of long-term Refuseniks in his hotel room and at the US Embassy. Senator Lautenberg wanted to learn more about the history of Judaism in Russia, Jewish emigration, the fate of the prisoners of Zion and the Refuseniks, and the possibility and ways of restoring Jewish traditions and education. The Refluseniks all agreed that the most respected US Senators were Jackson and Lautenberg.

After the meeting, we provided the Senator with the current list of Refuseniks. The very next day, he presented the list to high level Soviet authorities, demanding that they be allowed to emigrate. As a result of this action, some Refuseniks soon received permission.

Later, a well-known Kiev Jewish artist, Samuel Kaplan, gave the Senator a present on behalf of the Soviet Jewish immigrants: his painting which depicted a long line of Jewish people standing in front of the American Embassy, waiting to be granted refugee status. The picture still hangs in Senator Lautenberg’s office.

Rabbi Shimon Gamliel said “on three things are the world sustained: Justice, Truth and Peace.” He would have been proud to know Frank Lautenberg.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/06/05/the-passing-of-senator-frank-lautenberg/feed/0Siberian City of Tomsk to Return Wooden Synagogue to the Jewish Communityhttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/04/30/siberian-city-of-tomsk-to-return-wooden-synagogue-to-the-jewish-community/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=siberian-city-of-tomsk-to-return-wooden-synagogue-to-the-jewish-community
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/04/30/siberian-city-of-tomsk-to-return-wooden-synagogue-to-the-jewish-community/#commentsTue, 30 Apr 2013 21:41:53 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1637JTA — The Siberian city of Tomsk will return an old, wooden synagogue built by Jewish soldiers to the Jewish community. The synagogue and surrounding complex will be handed over to the Jewish Community of Tomsk after the municipality finds alternative housing for some 15 families who are currently living there, Mayor Nikolay Nikolaychuk said, according […]

]]>JTA — The Siberian city of Tomsk will return an old, wooden synagogue built by Jewish soldiers to the Jewish community.

The synagogue and surrounding complex will be handed over to the Jewish Community of Tomsk after the municipality finds alternative housing for some 15 families who are currently living there, Mayor Nikolay Nikolaychuk said, according to Chabad.org.

The rabbi of Tomsk, Levi Kaminetsky, told JTA that the city will invest about $1 million in finding the families apartments.

The wooden synagogue, he said, was built 107 years ago by Jewish Cantonists, young children torn away from their homes to serve in the Czar’s army. It is in need of major renovation and may end up serving as Tomsk’s second synagogue, or a school for the children of the community of a few hundred Jews.

Also last week, a new Torah scroll was introduced into the city’s functioning synagogue, Or Avner, and the cornerstone was laid for the construction of a new Jewish community center.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/04/30/siberian-city-of-tomsk-to-return-wooden-synagogue-to-the-jewish-community/feed/0Legionnaires Day in Latvia Draws Protestershttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/03/18/legionnaires-day-in-latvia-draws-protesters/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=legionnaires-day-in-latvia-draws-protesters
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/03/18/legionnaires-day-in-latvia-draws-protesters/#commentsMon, 18 Mar 2013 19:05:56 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1482On Saturday, March 16th, over 1000 Latvians honored Nazi-allied World War II soldiers. Violence almost erupted between the Latvian participants and the ethnic Russians, who are a minority in the country. The police used force, dragging some participants away and detaining four, to prevent any tumult. Read the AP article here. March 16th is considered […]

]]>On Saturday, March 16th, over 1000 Latvians honored Nazi-allied World War II soldiers. Violence almost erupted between the Latvian participants and the ethnic Russians, who are a minority in the country. The police used force, dragging some participants away and detaining four, to prevent any tumult.

March 16th is considered Legionnaires Day, a day in which Latvians commemorate war veterans. Others believe that this day glorifies fascism.

Latvia has a complex history regarding fascism and communism. After gaining independence after WWI, the USSR occupied them in 1940. Nazi Germany then occupied them one year later, until 1944 when the Soviets returned. As a result, many Latvians feel the Nazi occupation, which forcibly conscripted many into the Waffen SS divisions, was a time in which they fought for independence from communism.

Approximately 80,000 Jews, or 90 percent of Latvia’s prewar Jewish population, were killed in 1941- 1942. Many Latvians claim they did not have a role in the Holocaust because this was before the Latvian Waffen SS units were formed.

Protesters of Saturday’s commemoration referenced a list of Latvian crimes committed during WWII.